Why the Key to Success Is Failure

James Dyson, the entrepreneur behind the eponymous vacuum cleaner, in a guest column praises failure. As a man who came close to bankruptcy and it was the success of his bagless cleaner that saved him, it had to succeed. But even with that pressure it took 5,127 prototypes and 15 years to get it right, reports Wired.

There are countless times an inventor can give up on an idea. By the time I made my 15th prototype, my third child was born. By 2,627, my wife and I were really counting our pennies. By 3,727, my wife was giving art lessons for some extra cash. These were tough times, but each failure brought me closer to solving the problem. It wasn’t the final prototype that made the struggle worth it. The process bore the fruit. I just kept at it.

When it comes to failure, I’m trumped by Edison who famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Those 10,000 detours resulted in the Dictaphone, mimeograph, stock ticker, storage battery, carbon transmitter and his joint invention of the light bulb. In the end, 10,000 flops fade into insignificance alongside Edison’s 1,093 patents.

His words on failure echo those of Richard Noble, the man behind the incredible Bloodhound SSC project, the first car to travel at 1,000 mph. He talked of the 10 attempts they had to design the better car. A point that both made was that perhaps failure is the wrong word, if you have nine attempts to design a car but succeed on the 10th, were the others really failure, or were they stepping stones on the path to success?

Comments (1 of 1)

In Europe failure is usually frowned upon. I know this from my own personal experience. Before founding Zin.gl I've had some successes (place.to.be, looknmeet) and quite a few failures (qt magazine). In business in Belgium a failure usually means you won't raise any capital, you won't get any business support ... in fact you are treated like a pariah.

If you do succeed you will need to accept the reality that business angels and VC's take too much control ... and thus killing exactly that part of an entrepreneur which makes him succesful in the first place. I believe this is the main reason why so many entrepreneurs come from US.

Max Levin, co-founder of Paypal said it best:

The very first company I started failed with a great bang. The second one failed a little bit less, but still failed. The third one, you know, proper failed, but it was kind of okay. I recovered quickly. Number four almost didn’t fail. It still didn’t really feel great, but it did okay. Number five was PayPal. Max Levchin (Cofounder, PayPal)

Alexander Dresen
twitter.com/alexanderdresen

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